I WOKE UP WITH A START A WEEK LATER. I ONLY had a bra on. My belly was enormous. I was so tired that I couldn’t even remember anything. I couldn’t remember if I was a little kid in pyjama bottoms waking up from a nap. I couldn’t remember if I was an old lady. I couldn’t remember what point of my life I was at.
Raphaël was sitting in a chair in the corner of the room. He was drinking a glass of iced tea. He had showered. His aftershave smelled like licorice. His hair was combed back and he was wearing a suit. He had a gold ring on his pinky finger with a sparrow on it. My eye went to it as if it was an announcement. He looked like he’d been up all night. This worried me. If he had been up all night thinking, there was no telling what kind of crazy thoughts he had come up with.
Raphaël closed his eyes for several seconds. He was gone to the world when he did that. Who knew how long he was away in his alternate universe? He could be spending years in Narnia. He might be involved in a terrible four-year battle. He looked exhausted and world-weary when he opened his eyes again.
I thought he looked dead handsome.
I still wasn’t used to being awake. I felt as if someone had made me out of snow and I was going to melt soon, so what was the point? We had gone back to the way we were when we were little kids, where we couldn’t say anything to one another at all.
“I’ve decided to kill my father,” Raphaël said.
His gun was hanging from his left hand. He stood up and walked to the window and looked out. He seemed to be checking for something, but I couldn’t imagine what. I wasn’t sure if he meant that he was going to go kill his father right now. I somehow didn’t think so. Nobody ever did what they said they were going to do right after they said it. You could procrastinate for years.
He turned back around and came and sat on the end of the mattress. He gave me such a strange look. He looked at me with terrible love for a second. He put the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger.